URBANBUBBLE AND THE GRADUATES: ONLINE AND ON FIRE

Date: June 19, 2013

Author: Andrea

-

With the younger generation the most affected by unemployment in today’s difficult economic climate, an internship is a great way to gain valuable experience. Whilst often criticised for offering little more than tea making duties, there are some in the business community that recognise the skills and value for money that this generation can offer. urbanbubble is one such example, pushing its interns to the limit with the task of devising and delivering urbanbubble’s entire social media strategy.

Residential property management firm, urbanbubble, has experienced rapid growth in recent years and like many other successful 21st businesses, the company recognised the potential opportunities to enhance its offering through strategic use of social media. However, as a relatively new business, urbanbubble did not have a budget bursting with funds to throw at it. The solution? Utilise the expertise of a generation adept with all streams of social media and more importantly keen to get a foot on the job ladder and be given a chance to show off their skills.

urbanbubble teamed up with Manchester Metropolitan University to offer its graduates the exciting opportunity of on-the-job experience and the chance to play an integral part in the real life formation of the company’s social media strategy. After receiving a high volume of impressive CVs and conducting several Alan Sugar style interviews, urbanbubble offered a paid four month internship to Advertising and Brand Management graduates, Farah Bahsoon (22) and Lucy Hartley (21).

Farah and Lucy were tasked with developing a strategy that would allow urbanbubble to engage with the residents and owners of the properties it serves, as well as the surrounding community and others in the business. It was also imperative that the chosen approach would complement other communication strategies and help to shape urbanbubble as a forward thinking agent that provides excellent value and high standards of service. Farah and Lucy have now completed the first of their four month internship at urbanbubble and this is what they have to say about their experience so far:

So girls, how has your first month been at urbanbubble?

In all honesty, it was nothing like we expected. On our first day, we were welcomed at 9am by the Managing Director, Michael Howard, and were set multiple tasks.

We then received an email from urbanbubble’s Change and Innovation manager, Andrea Thornhill, with a scheduled meeting. We quickly learned that Michael loves his team meetings and presentations, first week in and we’d already had three! We presumed this one was going to be Michael’s meeting and we’d be taking notes, in actual fact it was the other way round.

Michael wanted us to present our social media strategy to himself and Andrea and plans of how we would deliver it over the four month period. This was daunting to say the least! Following that, we were asked to do it all again, but this time to the whole team, as it is integral to get all urbanbubble employees clued up and on board. This was even scarier.

We were starting to wonder what we had got ourselves into, but after powering through our presentations, we received nothing but positive feedback. Thankfully we’d impressed Michael and the team and have been given the go ahead to proceed with our ideas. Phew.

We are very excited to be working on the project and will be utilitsing multiple social network platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube as well as some really exciting (but top secret) plans with QR codes. We can’t wait to see the outcome!

Our experience so far is not what we were expecting, but in a good way! We have had friends that have done internships and the experience they were offered doesn’t compare and it’s great to be given so much responsibility and creative input. It’s been a challenging yet great month and we look forward to the next three with urbanbubble!

Michael Howard, Managing Director at urbanbubble comments: We have had a presence on social media platforms for some time now and that presence has been sufficient to the business needs to date. However, with the growth we have achieved in the past year and plans for future growth, I felt that a structured social media strategy was a must if we were to continue to offer the best service possible.

The decision to hand over the responsibility for this to graduates was a relatively straightforward one and made perfect sense as we have always recognised the skills of graduates and their thirst for experience and drive for success is exactly what we look for in employees.